Tires for passenger cars, trucks and the like are often recapped when the tread has worn off. If the tire carcass is basically sound, the worn tread portion is removed to provide a smooth crown portion of the tire to which a new tread may be applied. If a new, previously formed tread is to be attached to the tire crown, a recapping cement is applied to the crown to hold the gum rubber to the tire. If a new tread is to be applied by an extruding process, cement may be applied to the tire crown to hold the strip wound extrusion in place. Before the new tread is applied, it is also common practice to apply a liner spray to the interior of the tire to seal small holes, cracks, etc. in the tire which might permit air to leak through to the crown and cause partial separation of the new tread from the tire. The liner material is a liquid which is commercially available in spray form and is usually a synthetic rubber composition dissolved in a solvent so that it can be sprayed into the tire interior where it coagulates to provide the necessary seal.
Although these materials are usually applied manually, as by spraying or the like, attempts have been made to automate horizontally extending support means including a pair of spaced rollers which engaged the tire beads for rotating the tire. Also extending from the frame through the tire opening was a hold-down arm which engaged the lower portion of the tire beads to hold the tire against the rollers. A pair of tire spreading rollers were mounted on the hold-down arm. One was fixed on the arm and the other was mounted on a moveable, adjustable slider which permitted the distance between the rollers to be adjusted to accommodate different tire sizes. Two liner spray heads were also provided, one being mounted adjacent the fixed roller and the other being mounted on the adjustable slider, both being positioned to spray down into the tire interior. Although this machine was an improvement over prior manual operations, it did not apply the liner spray equally well to different size tires and it did not provide a means of automatically applying recapping cement.